Top of the Key

That’s about all I can focus on lately.  Took Wednesday off, completely.  Ate my face off too.

Woke up this morning at 5am, Thursday, for Masters swim.  Decided that I should walk, think about things and prepare my day in that 10 minutes it takes me to walk to the gym.  Why would I ever drive?  With a clear focus, I swam in the slow lane again, and just focused on hitting my 1:35’s.  Had one other women in the lane, so I led it and the ‘go’ times left me with plenty of rest, so I just tried to keep my pace.  Felt pretty strong and rested.  I swam another 1000 yards after masters, and could have gone longer were it not for time contraints.

More to come…day has just begun!

Ok, back from the final workouts of the day.  Rode outside, it was perfect.  Not hot, not cold, extremely windy which was fine with me, and nobody out on the roads.  Had a pretty good ride too, couldn’t quite get in the z4 efforts, but came close.  Finished with 76 miles, and at about mile 70, I looked down at my heart rate zones which are taped to my headset, and there inscribed on my headset cap was the letters HTFU and a skull and cross bones.  So, I guess i need to suck it up…right?  thanks Mike and Kristina.  Now that I think back to the start of my ride, Jess said something about ‘are those your heart rate zones’?  I looked down, and said yeah.  These days my mind is sort of wandering, so it might take me a few times to get the jist of things.

Ran off the bike, an easy 10.  I like to say easy 10, because in my mind, I’ve done alot of 10 milers, and even though I’m pretty wasted right now, I don’t want to build up anything.  Out 5, back 5 at a steady pace.  Turned out the steady pace was 7:41 miles, with a heart rate just above middle of z2!  SWEET.  I had some stomach issues that i worked out while running, didn’t stop.  After reading a post from Tim about the mental side of running, I took it to heart.  At about mile 7, I invited my mind into my head, I guess that sounds a little strange, but usually you try and block out your mind so you can stay focused.  For me, this time, I invited it in…and asked the mind to take a seat, be quiet, and watch.  Because I asked if what I was feeling was painful, or was it just my mind trying to say ’stop for a bit, it’s starting to hurt’.  But it wasn’t hurting, it was just uncomfortable, as Tim says.  So with the ‘mind’ sitting quietly there in my head, I ran the rest without stopping, and beating my goal pace.

Sounds crazy, don’t it?  I’ll probably look back at this post tomorrow and laugh.  Ok, so big brick is down for the week.  Oh wait, not really.  I have to ride 129 on Saturday, then run 8 miles.  Gotta eat and get some sleep.